Humo Caliente
by frooit
Summary: What happens when Sands can't seem to get away from El.
1. part one

**humo caliente 1**

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The question _"would you rather be deaf or blind?"_ felt appropriate as the blood dried on his face. Dried tight to the skin. And that smell of it baking in the heat isn't something he'd be forgetting soon. That, and the whole eye gouging thing. Twisting silver inches and inches away, until red, to a final black.

Like he'd never wondered what an eye popping sounded like.

Not much hearing goes on if you scream loud enough. Nor if blood rushes through your ears fast enough. It ended up meaning, asking them to do something about your ears next was an idea. Right up there with: _"Is that sanitized?"_ and "_Fucking, CHRISTLORDJESUS"_.

Sands didn't hear his eye popping. Oh no, he felt it. Clear as day. Wet and all over the place. It had to have been perfect, the operation, because he's still breathing.

He'd just as soon forget that, as he would he's sitting in a bar with some Mexican legend, who doesn't much talk and plays guitar.

"Oh, I'm never eating pork again."

What playing there was, stops, thank you sweet Jesus, and wood creaks. Wood for a stool.

"_¿Por qu__é__?"_

"Well," A dramatic pause, so he can turn his head and be facing the fucker, "when someone's gouged your eyes out, and that smell you're smelling is so much of your own blood, red meat - pork, for instance - just doesn't have that same appeal. Now, to put it simple, here... that's probably what my fucking eyes looked like when they yanked them out. _Red meat_."

He affords himself a smile when El Mariachi doesn't talk back right away. Maybe there's something like sickness on his face. Maybe shock. Maybe nothing at all but that scowl he only ever pictures him wearing.

"Aren't eyes white?"

"Yes... What's your point?"

"It would be _white meat_, then."

"Need I remind you, _Mister Guitar Jockey_, that we _bleed_? I'm never eating pork again. Not fucking _ever_."

The question _"are two heads better than one?"_ seems appropriate. _One. One, one one, _Sands decides. When head number two is angst on legs in leather.

"What happened to your little friend?"

He wasn't expecting conversation. He wasn't expecting much these days. Let's call it lost humanity, and ignore the fact that that's how he's always been.

"Oh, him? Actually. He disappeared one day, and wouldn't you know it? I couldn't seem to find him again."

"_Me aflijo para o__í__r eso_."

"And I'm sure you are... You wouldn't happen to have a, uhh... cig, would you?" Another smile, slower, easier, and all for the sake of getting what he wanted. Manipulation. What he indulges in most, when he's not feeling the edges of empty sockets, or biting lime.

There's a potted plant on the table behind them. Greenhouse aroma, wet dirt, leather, and candles, because those smell too. Burning wick has a way of reminding him of nicotine. Thank God, because he might have forgotten over the skull-splitting headaches.

He's in a constant state of clenching teeth.

When El hands him a lit cigarette, and actually has to take his hand and fold the fingers around the filter, he wants to thank him in every way he knows. But he doesn't.

He just wraps his lips around the thing, not giving it a second thought. _Smooth and in control, Sheldon. Set them up. Watch them fall. No one'll touch you. No one can._

But someone did.

When you can't physically sob, you start to believe you're getting stronger. _I have no fucking eyes _just hasn't caught up yet. The thing is, if you still have legs, you keep running. And where that got him was right next to El Mariachi. This just means there isn't much hope left, and getting stronger means getting his claws in someone.

He stubs out the cigarette on the bar and tries a _"thanks"_ now, but wheezes instead. Oh yeah, feel the burn. If he still had eyes they'd be stinging from the haze of smoke in here. That alone tells him the place is small. Less room for air to travel with close walls and low ceilings.

He can't hear many people. In fact, no others.

"Are we alone?"

"_Si._"

"Goodie."


	2. part two

**humo caliente 2**

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What is freedom anyway?

Cutting it down and turning it over, it's not freedom at all. It's an imposed idea. Freedom in a society of self-indulgent cows is equal to nothing. You forget it's there, you walk over it, you come to Mexico and freedom is the dust in the air from unpaved roads and days without bathing.

Sands can't sleep.

Here's a scenario: take a person. Take away that person's eyes—well, gouge, scoop or skewer, if you will—and see if that person sleeps for the first week. The first week of bandages rapped so tight that's all you're think about. Of smelling vinegar and piss, people screaming, squeaking gurney wheels. Needles you can't see but you feel. Cold hands.

Oh, they won't sleep. And they'll begin to wonder if they ever will again, and not just subsequently pass out from exhaustion. Every time. And what after that?

Sitting long enough in any one place can make you wonder if you're asleep. Nodding off in public could have been a problem, if not for headaches. On and off. Flash floods.

The only thing Sands can rightly say he _sees_ anymore is red.

"_Fucking _mother—are you there?"

"_Si, si..._"

He might have coughed up a sting about El being awake, but he skips it, for once, everyone needs a break, and says, "Does this _Candy Land _carry any pills?"

_"Quiz__á_."

"Could you scurry your fine ass down stairs and rustle me up some, then?"

"_El tiempo es cuatro de la ma__Z__ana_."

"Not... entirely _privy _to that information. Being eyeless, and all... What are you still doing awake?"

"Your mouth runs."

"Yes, yes I know, that's nice... What are you doing?"

"_Sentada_."

"Golly, thanks for painting me a picture. Let's try another. What are you—that's _you_, El Mariachi, Mexican—doing up—which certainly isn't sleeping, like I wish I could be doing—at four in the morning?"

"Cannot sleep."

**  
**

"Of course."

There isn't much expectance in a dark world. With dark sounds and a darker touch. If you get bruised enough the only expectance is to stop pushing. But Sands never did.

"Imagine that... They're sleeping pills?"

"_Si_."

"And this will knock me... oh, say—_right out_?"

"_Si_."

"Well, thank you, _amigo_. Let's have a hand shake."

When he feels a hand closing around his own, he tugs it in and towards his chest. Hard. To get a little point across.

"Let's hope here, that you're _not_ pulling my chain and these _are,_ in fact, sleeping pills. If they aren't? That would just, well... be bad beans on your part. Bingo?"

"_Si_."

Sands nods, letting go. Disgruntled business man all over again.

Some things you just can't change.

**  
**

"You were tormenting the natives today?"

"What?"

"You went out?"

"About that. You see, I haven't been able to sleep.."

A nod he can't see.

"...and I asked around. Seems some guy had what I wanted."

"What did you buy from him?"

"Magic pills."

A smile he can feel.

**  
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Who needs eyes when all you ever did with them in the first place was watch bad Mexican TV, ogle breasts, and intimidate people? You can still do the intimidation part. Wide sunglasses, sly smiles, hinting tones. They tend to do that.

Sands never was a fan of TV. He'd said watching too much made you go blind. He remembers saying that to Ajedrez once in a bar, in this town, when they were still an _item_, and scowls.

He'd said it. And she hadn't said anything back.

"These aren't fucking w_ooo_rking."

He misses ogling breasts.

El Mariachi is music wherever he goes. He's music when he sits down. He's music when he stands up. And that's all because he has these annoying little chains stuck on his pants. They jangle. Obnoxiously. Sands might have made an unfriendly comment about them when they met, but... first impressions were important.

You've got to play the game right. Keep the proverbial peace.

As soon as El's crossing his legs Sands knows that he's sitting across the room. Which is as far as his power goes. He can't tell if he's sitting on something, or holding something, looking somewhere, looking a certain way—he has no eyes after all. You can only do so much.

"I'm not feeling anything, here."

Sands is lying across the only bed in the room. A rented room above the smoking cantina.

"Let them work."

"You know," he turns over, from being on his back to being on his stomach, "They've had time to work, fucknut. I want to sleep _now_. Pass right on out. Fly free..."

"Give it time."

"Well, I thank you for your support, _Captain Obvious_, but I think I've been done over. And that makes me, ohh—a wee bit angry."

"You should not have gone out."

"I. Can't. _Sleep_."

Cue moment of silence—almost silence. A car drives buy, a cat meows, someone yells, a door slams, El's chains jingle.

"El's bells," Sands groans, cracks a smile at the joke, then feels like he's falling. Only he's not. He's on a bed. One that's full of lumps and smells like starch mixed with blood and alcohol. Realizes the last two are because of him, and then doesn't realize anything because he's out.

**  
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"I had a dream... You were in it, by the way. Well. Your pants."

El laughs and says, "What?"

"And I've slept." He's almost disappointed when he says it. As it passes the lips. He really needed a good reason to shoot someone today. It takes the edge off a headache. Makes you feel two years younger. Quells loneliness. Hypes you up.

Only extremes ever got Sands doing anything. Extreme fear, extreme pain, annoyance, the list goes on. Not much he did was what he didn't want to do.

He didn't want to get up.

El, being the jingling fiend he is, says, as if to no one at all, "We need to move."

Sands is especially annoyed by this and flashes the finger where he thinks El is standing. He's right, and gets a door shutting for his trouble.

"Yeah, love you too... Bring me back something to drink!"

**  
**

El comes back, drink absent.

"I find it entirely too funny you've managed not to get killed wearing those pants. I mean, _really_. Makes me think _cat_. I hate cats."

"I like cats."

"And you would."

Not that it matters, but Sands supposes it's in the afternoon, when it's at its hottest and everyone's cramped in bars where it's no cooler but it's out of the Sun. He's feeling sticky and all over gross.

"I need a fuck..."

"Sex?"

"Are you offering?"

El doesn't answer.


	3. part three

**humo caliente 3**

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It's just too freaky that El manages to make his way over to the bed without a noise. Not even the _zipzip_ of fabric against fabric. No jangle, no creaky floor boards. Just a hand on Sands' shoulder, moving down to the throat.

"I didn't mean that."

Whether that's bullshit or not, he doesn't know yet. When everything you say is bullshit, and everything you do is bullshit, the line starts to blur. It happens.

Like he's afraid of El actually doing something, he swallows, thickly and upside down. He frowns when El doesn't. Do anything. The hand recoils, and this time he hears him walk away. He'd been expecting a more carnal side from the guy who drops men like a disease.

Come on. Bend the blind guy over the bed. Get down and dirty. It's as easy as _insert coin here_.

Sands' never, in his life, tried to be seductive. All for the sake of relieving some stress, he's really hoping he's being something like it now. The picture of seduction, draped over the bed, arms hanging over his head, head bent back and turned to the side. He can feel the hair in his face.

Sands isn't anything hideous to look at. Well, with his sunglasses secure. He may be a little grimy, but who isn't in Mexico? And oh, that's new. Fucking in shades.

"Hey, hey. You still here?"

"I'm here."

"Good, because I'm feeling really cool about this now."

Something creaks—a chair maybe—and he thinks he hears a gun click. No, he _knows_ that was a gun. That's his kind of music.

He lies still on the mattress. Breath temporarily leeched.

"Going to fuck me, or shoot me, there, El?"

"I could do both."

Like he can run. Like he would run even if he could. He's never in his life tried doing that either. He'd pull his gun and take a bite out of El before he went down.

It would be clumsy, it would be foul. But that was life. And shooting a blind man was like shooting a man in the back. Sands doesn't think El could pull the trigger and do the duty. Just to be merciful.

That makes him grimace, and he says, "Kinky. I expect you're just a man-killer, and not a man-fucker, then?"

"I'm not a man-killer."

"Oh? What's your crystal clear record got to say 'bout that?"

El is quiet.

"So you just fuck men? That, I didn't see coming."

"_Boca vulgar_..."

Sands laughs, loudly, and starts when the hand's suddenly back on his throat. Light touching and a thumb ghosting over his jugular. Nothing but a rumour. If he had eyes to close, they would be.

"You look nicer than you sound," El says.

It's turned into playing with snakes. Snakes, because he still can't fucking see. And what that gun clicking was, may mean he'll be waking up in an alley or somewhere worse. He's not going to call this trust, because the next thing you know, with where trust gets you... you could be eyeless.

Which is the idea. There's not much to worry about now.

Sands breathes through his mouth. He doesn't move from where he is and doesn't do any touching of his own. The one hand has grown into two, and they're slowly moving lower and picking at clothing as they go.

Over his belt buckle, up his sides.

"Not to interrupt, but you have _really_ soft hands."

"_Gracias_."

Without eyes, touch feels like a world of new. And fingers that know what they're doing help especially.

He's asking his lungs for a break already. They don't seem to listen, and El keeps on going. Smoothing a palm down his arm, over his chest, back along his neck. Pushes the hair out if his face. Leans over and gusts a breath in his ear.

El has his hands under Sands' shirt and on his hips when there's a hesitation.

That doesn't sit well with Sands. He hiccups.

"What?"

He didn't hear anything, not that he was listening, but fuck. _Fuck_, he really needs to be touched now. Screw being shot, screw the cartels, screw, screw, screw. He really wants to God damn _screw_.

"You're enjoying this?"

Sands acts like he wasn't just trying to will himself to see. Like he wasn't thinking about butt-fucking, guns, or breasts, or fried eggs because he's just as hungry as he is horny.

"Talking, why is there talking? I'd be enjoying it even more if you put your hands... lower. In the crotch area. I need some help with that."

So he's being a bit impromptu with a guy he's only met twice... But you only live once. And he never said he wasn't a jackass. A jackass who's blind and doesn't want to fuck something he'll regret later. He can picture himself stumbling into a gay bar too easily, or feeling up fat thighs.

El says, "Alright."

This, if anything, is safe ground. He's managed to scratch the stumbling, the bar and the regret. Everything else is still sitting there and just _itching_ to happen.

**  
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He's just sitting here itching to happen.

Menacing disembodied hands again. They go through his hair, over a cheek, along the jaw. They're moving higher when he suffers out, "No."

"If you fancy your fingers at all El Mariachi, you won't try that."

El's hand is hovering above Sands' sunglasses.

He's being his cat through and through, as it were. Because curiosity killed the cat, and though they may have nine lives, that doesn't bring back severed fingers. No matter how feline you are.

El doesn't feel inclined to say _"sorry"_, but he doesn't touch the sunglasses. He leaves them as they are, smokey, hiding something, which is really a whole lot of nothing, and lands his hand on Sands crotch.

Sands might have smiled, if we wasn't so busy groaning, "_Finally_," and then "Harder."


	4. part four

**humo caliente 4**

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The room is congested with hot air, sweat dampening the curve of Sands' back. He's hung sideways over the bed, flat out, cursing and digging his fingers as far as they'll go into El's back. Really hoping to leave a bruise.

He'll deny anything like begging was near the surface when he tells El to move faster. _Pick up your feet. Get a move on._

He will admit however, that El doesn't smell half as bad as he does.

Dirt, smoke, alcohol, sweat, and dried blood. He smells like everything you wouldn't want to smell like. Not that he can help it, he isn't so keen on washing. Now, especially. Say if you gouge an eye out, going deep, all you're left with is blood vessel and optic nerves. In open air, it scabs and tries to heal.

Take hot water, totaled optic nerves, and mix. It's a kind of burn you'd get from tequila, but without the satisfying mellow chaser.

Sands is still dressed. Head to toe. Black jeans, black shirt, boots, guns. And when El's hands are touching and opening his shirt, there's a distant thought about losing buttons; little plastic ones down his front.

Everything he has on him now, is where he's at. Guns, cash, sunglasses. That's it. He lost most of his clothing and anything extra to the turn of the coup. You couldn't ask for a worse situation.

You couldn't ask for a better situation when you meet a certain mariachi in a bar at the end of the night, after a week of sterile agony. Sauza tequila, talk, day old bread. That was it.

El's fingers undo his belt buckle, they pull the belt itself from the loop of his jeans and snag on his zipper. It isn't entirely friendly when El kisses him on the mouth. Sands wasn't hoping or expecting it to be all rainbows and furry animals. Their teeth click, the whole thing tasting like a mouth full of change, coppery.

The air gets hotter.

Grinding against a virtually invisible man while he pulls at your hair so hard your scalp tingles hotly, is new. All the while wanting to shoot him dead because of that, but, _Christ_, being kind of busy, is not.

Kind of busy not trying to picture El's face in your head, or listening to the bed creak protest after protest. Kind of busy remembering you're Sheldon Jeffrey Sands, who works for the CIA, _worked_ is more like it, and doesn't like interruptions, or taking _no_ for an answer.

Sands grits his teeth, hard enough to get a funny tang of pain, and gasps when El's open palm finds its way through his jeans and to the source.

Thud, thud, thud.

"_Se__Z__or, se__Z__or, solamente una noche es pagada_."

Sands hisses, grabbing El's wrist to stay it from moving. He breathes.

"It's for you."

**  
**

It's nicer outside in the morning, when the sun's coming up and the land's still cool. You can breathe steadily and not coat the insides of your lungs with dust. The winds eased, chill breaking.

It would have been nice, if standing out in the open were a temporary thing.

Sands can hear El's voice explaining the story, but he isn't listening. He's thinking. Expecting the mariachi is leaning against the wall of the closest building, one leg up, smoking through words. He can smell smoke, so that's true enough.

Let's call this a game he plays. The game of manufacturing pictures to replace sight. Take a place, sound and smell provided, and give that place an image. For instance, he expected the spread on the bed was green and the furniture was cherry red. He expected El's hair was tied back when he kissed him because he didn't feel it against his face.

"He booted us because you happened to mention I was there?"

"That is what he said."

Sands sniffs and turns his head to the side. Apparently your sinuses suffer some undoing in the event of an eye gouging. His nose runs. He rubs it on the gloves on his hands, and then his jeans.

"Well, that gets me right here. Not that we were doing anything. Nothing. We weren't loud—"

"He said we were."

"Never mind, then."

He sniffs again.

"What time is it?"

"Five in the morning."

**  
**

Not much you want open is open at 5:30 in the morning, when the air still smells like air and not exhaust. But life goes on. Then again, when your day's been shot, you feel like getting someone shot. Like shooting someone clean between the eyes just to feel their blood fleck your skin.

So it's an acquired taste.

Take chocolate. Have a bite, get the flavour, go back for more.

Sands won't say murder, he'll say expendable and reload his gun.

"What time is it?"

"Five forty-three."

They're sitting on the curb of some street Sands doesn't know the name of, smoking their lungs black, and not talking. So cartels may be stalking the streets, and one might just round the corner, unload a magazine, and start a true blue Mexican stand-off...

The sun hasn't even risen yet. None of that is relevant until you have proof you're not the last man on Earth. You're blind, you're paranoid, and until someone's footsteps kick by, raising dust, or El talks, and it clicks, you're the only one there.

Early morning is life without expendabilities.

El's boot skids across the dirt on the ground. Cue jingling.

Early morning is life without _much _expendabilities.

"Alright. This is all well and good, but I'm thirsty," Sands says.

"There is a store open across the street," El replies, breathing smoke in Sands' face. The time now 7:42.

Sands blows the smoke right back before he gets up.

"I'll just be over there."

If this wasn't Mexico, it might be strange to walk into a store with four guns completely visible and hanging out. Two in shoulder holsters and two at the belt. Not that no one is nervous, but Sands can't really tell now can he? And if he could, he'd only smile. Dry ice.

"I feel like doing something a little extreme... Are you with me?"

He's speaking to the clerk.

"_¿Qu__é__ usted est__á__ diciendo?_"

Sands pulls a gun from his holster, levels it on the clerk, or wherever he last heard paper, and says, "I'm taking that as a yes."


	5. part five

**humo caliente 5**

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"You shot the clerk."

"I did not shoot the clerk... I shot _at_ the clerk. There's a difference."

"You came this close."

"I was what?"

"The bullet grazed his head."

"He pulled a gun. In fact, a whopper of a gun. The _shot gun_."

"You were threatening him."

"Well, you really didn't have to waltz in, just at that moment, surprise, surprise, and play hero. Things were doing just peachy actually, up to that point... So peachy, even, I wasn't going to shoot the clerk."

"But you did."

"But I did."

Sands flicks his spent cigarillo out in the direction of lazy traffic and people.

"You wanna know why I became CIA?"

He answers before El can open his mouth.

"To shoot people."

**  
**

It went like this.

Sands asked the guy behind the counter to get him tequila. _A good brand by the way, amigo_. Now the clerk would have, if El hadn't decided right then to become curious about the doings of corrupt CIA agents.

When the door swung open, Sands had looked, entirely out of reflex. In that time the clerk produced a shot gun, and as it was cocked for fire, Sands cursed.

From basic training there was a rule: _Don't fire on civilians_. There always was an exception though. _If the civilian is packing heat, and lets a round off in your direction, you may then proceed in sending him straight to fucking Broadway._

Sands had been all about following protocol right then when El roared, "_What are you doing_?", and threw him out the door. Having gotten far enough away from the building, and the shot gun, he grabbed Sands hard by the elbow, stopping him where he was.

"Are you crazy?"

"Jeepers, isn't it obvious? You're one swift _Mexicano_, there El."

Sands wrenched his arm free, fixing the sleeve by feel. It was just as bloodied and dusty as the rest of his outfit. A suggestion of the Day of the Dead. Rips and tears worth a thousand words. Landmarks.

El made an annoyed noise and started walking. _Jingle, jingle_.

End dramatic flash back.

**  
**

Sands starts another cigarillo and tells, not asks, El that he needs new _duds_. El's about to ask what that means when he catches Sands' hand plucking at the collar of his shirt. They're on the other side of town, sitting around like they never moved. Continue on world.

"These holes, right here," Sands is pointing to his jeans, "are when a cartel shot my legs out from under me."

He says it like El should pat him on the back, congratulate, compliment. He doesn't however, and changes the subject.

"I have spare clothing."

"If I'm anything with memory, you're taller than I am."

"So?"

"So, that wouldn't really work. Plus, you have terrible fucking taste." Sands turns just his head and smiles around the cig, showing nearly every tooth.

El suppresses something that might have been, _"Fuck you, Sands"_.

**  
**

"No, no, listen. They're called _Ray-Bans_. They look just like _these_. I need black lenses. Noo, _black_. _Lentes negras_."

Carts, vendors, stores with no A/C, the random urchin, pick pockets. Shopping in Mexico is always a barrel of fun. Epic battles fought with strategy and swayed with cash.

Sands may be easily annoyed, but he wheedled among the masters. Put on an act, a mustache, a hat, a smile. You're just playin' the game. And if that doesn't get you what you want, immediately refrain from breaking whoever's fingers, and move along.

"Fuck."

He's just about ready to do that finger breaking. No one's willing to sell him anything. It'll either be fun with fingers, or digging his nails into the throat of the next person who tries, _"No tengo lo que usted necesita"._

_I don't have what you need._

"Fuck, fuck, and double fuck..."

"What?" El's asking, living perpetual confusion.

"Curiosity killed the cat."

"I'm not a cat."

"You also said you weren't a man-killer."

Sands stumbles over the curb of the side walk, going down on his hands and knees, wheezing out a quick _"shit"_. He lifts his hands palm up to feel the cuts and pick out the gravel. El doesn't help him up.

"They fucking _sting_, why would I want to wash them?"

"They won't heal."

"Damn, _person_. I tripped, I didn't blow my hand off. Unless I'm bleeding quite profusely, no washing necessary."

Sands finally got his Sauza when they dropped shopping and set up in a bar. After just one shot he immediately asked where the restroom was and puked it right up.

**  
**

Such is their current position. Wedged into an empty bar restroom. Sands, hanging onto the edge of a grimy sink, spitting tequila flavoured acid. El, far enough away not to smell it.

"Are you sick?"

"No," Sands says, his fingers around the sink twitching, "I'm just fucked up."


	6. part six

**humo caliente 6**

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El insists with a twist of the wrist and a shove that Sands go into the stall. He really insists that Sands lose the shirt, and the belt, and open his mouth because here he comes. He also insists that Sands lean and grind into him just like that and forget about the tequila, and the Ray-Bans, and the hot sun.

The walls weren't white in the stall like they probably should have been, the toilet was completely missing, the whole atmosphere smelled of piss—but they really didn't care. Didn't notice. As long as El could fit his hands down Sands' pants they were easy. Shiny. Better than dead. Rattling stall doors and squeaking against stained linoleum.

"Holy fuck, you piece of shit." Sands' voice dives when El slams him into the furthest wall. It comes back up to say, "_Bar__ restrooms_. All coy before, in bed. Does that remind you of something?"

Fingers in unwashed hair pulling head back. Mouth on a curve of jaw.

"Or _someone_?"

Nothing like breath in his lungs for too long. His nails scream a bad note across the metal door.

**  
**

He's throwing up again. Tequila acid replaced with El aftertaste. Made only marginally better by the hand holding his hair out of his face and the promise of a bed to be kept this time. A lumpy motel bed, but a bed.

Sands spits, swallows an estimated ten times and waves El off with a shaky gesture. Like a trained dog. The hand leaves, and his hair falls around his ears. He's going to venture to say he's never been so tired. And there's a true metaphor about life to be had here, but he can't be bothered so he crawls to bed, dragging himself in. He's asleep before he can hear El's pants jingle.

**  
**

El doesn't know why, exactly, he hasn't told Sands to leave. _Get out, fuck off, go away._ Maybe he really didn't care, or he remembered what it was like to live with someone, and didn't shake it. He didn't tell Sands to leave, and Sands never tried. Something was static.

He adopted a problem that might be better than worse.

He adopted a yappy _dog_ with nine lives and a cordite flavour that lingered far too long.

A cordite flavour that sleeps like a wheezing, dying animal. Clinging to life out of sheer anger, stubborn pride, and something cousin to luck. He'll go out an extinct anomaly. Smoke hanging around the barrel of a gun never fading. Disease of the earth inescapable. El might have sat down and prayed then, but he didn't. He peeled his boots off and stayed.

**  
**

Sands is either extremely lucky, or extremely unlucky. And he doesn't care for anyone to extrapolate on which. It is what it is, and knowing won't change a thing. Ignorance is, and always will be, _bliss_. He's stopped trying to know things, because knowing things come back around.

You're taking a risk with knowledge. True brilliance, true _genius_, is knowing you'll always know nothing.

Didn't God have some sense of humour.


	7. part seven

**humo caliente 7**

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**  
**

It can be explained two different ways: El fucked his mouth, Sands sucked him off. He'll explain it one way: a blur. Blur like fast cars in the hot sun, coiling up dust and venting exhaust, smeared reflection. Grey, only black, unseen. Blur like white noise and the twist of a headache. Blur like the rumour El, himself, is. Legend walks the streets, they'll say. What they won't say is that he came down Sands' throat with a grunt, a rattle and jerk to the metal halves bolted to the floor that are supposed to be walls. That he petted down Sands' hair, throat, and asked if he was _alright_, pessimistic.

"Kiss my grits."

He feels about three feet tall—present, bed and blanket and close air—and can't say he likes that. Knows he's sneering up at the ceiling, but couldn't give a fuck, really. His spine hurts from the shove and nudge, the forearm across the windpipe. He scrabbles to sit better and swallows thickly. Nothing from El's side (if he's there at all), then, just the blare of a horn and women yelling outside, ground level. God fucking help him if he's growing _used_ to that sound. Brain's boiling behind empty sockets but that's really alright, it's good. Sizzle and spark that starts at the spine and crawls its way into his brain, spider legs, veins. When you think you're going to die and all you can do is beg it on.

He could feel better.

**  
**

"Dying feels like a vacation."

El's definitely there (boot click and metal on metal).

"You're still living."

And the _conversations_ he has with this one. Can't decide if he's more amused than annoyed. The answers, his side of the entire set up. His voice, growl, rumble, like incoming danger. The sky's falling. Crack of stone. Sides of a cave. Hollow but filled, filled...

"I'm really, really glad you reminded me," he says, turns his hands palm up to dig the nails in. Maybe he broke a finger because one's not bending all the way, getting down, getting over. The frown starts, and he nearly winces by the end of it. How it pulls on muscle and dried blood he didn't even know was there.

"I've got a question for you."

The guy could be looking out a window, could be leaning, praying, making _faces_ at him for all he fuckin' knows. Jesus Christ, he has no _eyes_. How the fuck are you supposed to function? (and the answer is, of course, _you're not_—that just dampens your day, doesn't it.)

"Why haven't you killed me yet?"

That's your five million dollar—_peso_, excuse me, question, El.

And he seems to know it.

**  
**

By the end of however many days it's been, Sands is pretty damn sure El's trying to keep him out of the cartel's (whatever's remaining, or whoever might have heard word from the grapevine) sight. Which is terribly sweet, isn't it? He feels like he's been reverted to the good old days, where you could actually trust people and have a moment's sigh. Knowing, _knowing_, gut feeling everything, that your buddy's got your back. Don't worry, he _promised_ he wouldn't back-stab. He won't betray for loads of cash and a hot lay, oh no. Insert winning smile and a wink here. This is _truth_.

Sands wants to throw up.

He gets just as far as the doorframe and does.

(The inside of his mouth's like the beaten in grit of the bathroom floor, the walls. Swarthy green and brilliant inflamed yellow. Stains, rust or worse, like the sunset or landscape in water paintings. Frequent. And all of this Sands can't see, just imagines. Gets from the smell, the touch, something living inside his head that still sees. Can pick up and put together, like sounds around shapes, implosions of just edges.) 

**  
**

And El doesn't answer him all at once. Gets it nice and thin and stretched around the corners for Sands to scowl at. Stays quiet and then finally just leaves, steps out, seriously. Leaves Sands awake, asleep, dizzy and paranoid. Keeps him where he is for two hours. But he does come back, El does (almost kind of not expecting). Dead weight in the air that's still the question. Framed just right, this could be Sands' moment of peace, before anything's decided and El hasn't spoken.

That's about the time he realizes he doesn't just want to have sucked the Legend himself off, he wants to be fucked by the Legend himself. Already really, so to speak, steeping into analogy, but seriously. He's all about actuality anymore. Besides, he really doesn't do with being kept waiting.


	8. part eight

**humo caliente 8**

**  
**

**  
**

You know when you choke, and for a second it feels like it's all over, down the tubes, here we come belly up? You know when you smell fresh air, and it feels like it's the beginning all over again, nothing better, no how, you're golden? Sands is in between all this. He's drowning. The bed has dug a hole into his back, just below the bruise (oh don't you know it's got to be a lovely violent violet, too) El gave him as a parting gift. The gift that wasn't the hot slide of come down his throat, a throat now raw and dry and all-over shit.

Breathing comes as an after thought. _Oh, right, should do that. Bingo._ It stings his sinuses. He can still smell the bile on the floor by the door. All that was left for him to let out when the tequila was gone.

"Good morning, yeah."

He's got a ring on his finger that was his father's. He took it from him as he lie embalmed, dead, in that thick oak coffin (satin innards, gold motif, it was the only magnificent thing Sands remembers of him). It's not that he's a horrible person, he didn't steal it, he just wanted something to remind him of why he's so glad the man's dead after all (so he can finally say, _it's about time_). He can't see the band anymore, but he does reach down and twist it, tight enough to pinch the skin underneath. Good ol' Dad, still a clinch of pain.

He remembers to breathe again.

Lying in darkness, lying in his invisible coffin—just like his father's dark, dark wood casket, with the blood red insides, like a split lip, like broken skin—it's easy to forget to breathe. It's easy to forget to live. The sting again, from the pinched skin, is enough to convince Sands he's not dead yet (yet is such an operative word). His sigh comes just as El walks in, creaking and jingling, all noise, no voice.

**  
**

"I'm starving."

"You look dead."

"You flatter me, El, you really do, but. I'm too occupied for your cute shit."

Maybe the comment never existed, or El just decided not to say it. Always the case, always the catch.

"_Food_. Pork. Tequila. Christ."

El's killing him, he really is. Begging isn't in his nature, not often anyway, and waiting and patience aren't either, but Sands doesn't want to eat alone. He's decided. He doesn't quite want to wander out there; Mexico, streets of dirt and blood and sweat (some of it his). What could happen to a blind gringo is anyone's guess, and his guess doesn't happen to be iced tea with cartel grunts. No. It happens to be just more of his parts missing, more disfigures to remember to breathe around. Maybe his fingers this time, or his tongue. Places he'll be feeling with his fingers, places empty and devoid of symmetry, devoid of humanity, torn and broken. He won't quite see but he'll _know_. He'll fucking drag a hand down and see it all anyway, bit by bit (his imagination has a way of running away with him). Fear's a thing of yesteryear, fear's a thing of someone who can see it in another's eyes. His is faded grey, and humanity is (was) a card he played. It'll slip through razored fingers.

"Sands."

They might as well be fucking, with the way El says his name.

"Yeah?" The open-mouthed _yeah_, left dragging around in his throat to come out longer, bored.

It's a cigarette. Pressed to his lips. Held to his mouth. He can smell the El on it, the waft of Legend still there from being in a pocket, stuffed down a boot, tossed into a guitar case.

He feels wired to that piece of paper and tobacco, caught by the balls (oh, literal).

He moans. Shameless as a dog, shameless as a whore, shameless as death. Teeth, around the filter, closing and pinching the edge, almost unsmokable now but he doesn't plan on smoking it right then anyway. He plans on thanking El for his kindness, actually. Right here and now. Right here and complicated. Convolution has its taste in Sands.

He gets as far as his fingers around a forearm, skirting the bend of an elbow and the power behind the arm. Gets as far as beginning a sentence and then ending it in a woosh. Get as far as smacking his head into the headboard (that he didn't know was there, of course) and coughing, acid, acid. The fingers that were on him earlier, almost in this kind manner, this gentle mocking, crush his windpipe in a way that doesn't only fill his head with blood, but his sinuses, too. There's the blood running, slow, slowly, slower (as if he's full of black sludge), to his top lip and stopping. Past tense moments. El kisses it, all of it's like burning, and finally answers Sands' question.

_Why haven't you killed me yet._

"Company."


	9. part nine

**humo caliente 9**

**  
**

All the way around the corner, all the way, pushing, pushing, teeth on the grit. It tastes like oil and smoke and all the things dying at your feet. He's breathing (that sting long gone, that ache lesser, he's got eyes permanently open by the way, it just depends on what he wants to see). It's not that you can get used to the blindness, always been a little fond of metaphors and double-meanings, it's that you learn to move and slide and pick your little broken self up around it. You turn onto sounds and feels and smells. You're a receptor (a deceptor) for all this. Your life kind of depends on you being at odds with everyone else, you knowing the heel in that motherfucker's shoe is coming loose and he's nervous, nervous as he should be, sweating like the flood gates open. And here you are, steady (plus, El's somewhere out there—listening to him, the effect's like black coffee, like living—he's got you, Sands, got you as you fall, because he's still killing you like is his magic).

Eyes, so to speak, black and smooth, beaming in sunlight. Dusty but clear. Teeth this time clenched in an open-lipped sneer, like the crack in the stone below boot clicks, below the seeing.

"I can see you." (how bored a blind man sounds even when philosophizing)

People don't know that dark shines.

It's like nothing you've ever seen before.

Because you're _not_ seeing it. It's all in that noggin of yours.

_Been looking for you_, the guy says. Has the _stones_ to.

Sands just has to, oh no, it's reflexive anymore, laugh.

Spilling out, feeling a little insanity, feeling the shift as he tilts.

"I can't really say the same, sweetheart."

It's the confusion that hands him the leverage.

It's the anger that puts the gun in his hand.

He bites the bullet and sends it on its way—that's what he does here.

The CIA operative never saw it coming. How's that for irony.

**  
**

"You left quickly." He loves him, he really does, like a pet, like a tiny black dog, like certainty, like the way he's his Captain Obvious to his Insano.

"Business, El, business."

**  
**

Five times a day you'll find them at each other's necks. Literal or not, it's there (growling, biting, slipping, fighting, nails digging out skin, fingers laying it back). Banter like a married couple, and doesn't that just make Sands peachy. Keen, in fact. Unlike married couples there's no money (he's working on that) to fight about, no kids (thank God, thank _you _Chicle-run-amuck), no business but the death business; helping people out the door, giving them the hard goodbye, sure. It's the little arguments that truly tie them.

"I left them right there. Let me draw you a map."

He's not much of a smoker out in the natural world, it's too distracting. But when at "home", when with El, it's almost mandatory you at least have one on the lips. To distract from the fact he's still a little wary of this whole partner thing. Another on the subject line his how much longer they stay in dives than they really should. Given Sands' situation, it's not the easiest to just _pick up_ a new place (he's gotten to the point of minimizing collision, sure, and if his knees are still bruised only El would know). Not needing El to find the toilet bowl is priceless. Needing El _to_ find his cigarettes isn't.

Sands can hear El praying for him. Everynight or every other.

And Sands listens. Playing dead never being so easy. The slow breaths he manages, as if this were his death bed, as if this were his funeral and only his Legend showed up. How sweet. He knows El knows he's awake. And that's the catch. El comes back to him smelling like hand soap, like stretched leather. Sands, like burnt rubber, like blood, like cold ashes, like some stagnant thing El likes keeping alive. Once you get a taste of something other than loneliness, well. Then you're lost. That's no new thing for this mariachi, though. He has a taste for death.

Image is subjective, it mattered only as far as you could use it. He doesn't bathe much, he doesn't sleep much anymore, keeps his hair wherever it falls, gets fleeting help with wardrobe. Somehow he lost all his jackets, his accessories and most of his sunglasses. Pretty sure his car was lit up like a candle during that whole Day of the Dead deal. Real fucking downer.

_You make me sick because I adore you so_.

Sounds like something El would say. Something he'd lean and press his hands together for, mumble, telling a higher being, trying to milk out some understanding, some forgiveness.

"Oh geez, El, you're not falling in love with me, are you?"

Walls, either brick or flesh this is how it goes.

El doesn't talk so much as he notices things.

_You're bleeding, you're tired, you're vulgar._

"I need some convincing."

Sex was a big part of it from the beginning. From the murder-talk like flirting. Like this was as it should be: Sands here, guns here, teeth slippery wet and biting. He can't see him but he knows he's staring, looking straight at him, into him, maybe trying to pick out why he's here again. Even if for the company no one's ever stayed this long without a devious reason. The problem with that, Sands doesn't give a rat's ass anymore. Not one bit.

"You need to quit smoking."

"And _you_ need to quit being a tease."

It's not so much kissing, it's a tiger's kiss, a biting, a snagging, tearing, blood on every lick and lunge. El grunts, and then it's fire down his spine, the run of a finger nail, the slide of a blade. El likes his toys and Sands likes sucking on his jaw, his collarbone, gripping his lower back. He's getting his hair torn out by the roots and only moans, lifting up to tell him to _move_, _get the fuck on me._ Straddle. Come on, cowboy. There's threat in the way he holds him down, just above scars where bullets tore, newer and older from way back when. He's craving a cigarette but craving El more.

"_Yeah._" Again with the deep breathing, under an ocean of air, trying to stay focused.

It's like fucking an idea, a concept. This is where the arms are, this is where the thighs strain, this is where the whole thing comes together as a body, human. Or slightly like it. A perversion. He's still got his boots on, he's still wearing El's shirt, and this is how it happens every time. _Every_ time. They don't foreplay, slowly undressing one another, it's balls out, take it or leave it. They're trying to smother each other, break each other. Care and time is for loves lost.

Sands snaps his head back, lifts his hips, grabbing for anything to anchor him down.

Now a days he keeps something tied around his eyes (holes, empty holes), a torn up shirt, a bandana. Something El took to doing for him a long while back when his sunglasses kept falling off during this part. El doesn't like to see blackness anymore than Sands likes to be reminded. The first time might have been curiosity, now it's just plain avoidance. His mint Sands came damaged. How true that is. But, yeah, El, he has a way of knowing what's going on, even with Sands. The cigarettes don't come as a surprise, just a cold pack into his fingers as he's lying there. He knows he's alone when the door creaks and slides shut. The click of shoddy metal, wannabe Mexican zippos, he knows the lighter's lit when he feels heat and smells burning fluid. Plucking strings impose in soon enough, close but too far off to make rhythm. He's gone out on the balcony, like most of these rooms in Mexico come with.

One of these days he's going to go up in flames. Smoking in bed has its ups and its downs.

Devil's sick on sin, he's just going to stay here, wait for whatever to happen. Wait for the end or the beginning, or another boy Chicle to swing by. Supposes El's his new Chicle and then some though. He sighs, filling the air around him with grey. Grey, blue, red. He can't see it.

If dying's a vacation, life's a joke without a punch line.


End file.
